The Rhythm of a CodeUnion workshop.

People frequently ask us how we structure our workshops. CodeUnion workshops revolve around a small group of people progressing through a series of code projects and challenges. The goal of these projects is very simple. We want people to write lots of code. More importantly, we want people to get frequent if not multiple times day feedback on their code. We don't want people stressing out, "Is this good code, is it bad code..." We want people to write code in an unhindered fashion while simultaneously not thinking about anything other than having fun and getting feedback from more seasoned developers.

CodeUnion workshops utilize three key forms interaction to facilitate as much facilitation between students and teachers as possible!

Regular code reviews via GitHub

We love giving feedback and have built tools and mechanics to ensure everyone has the opportunity to give and receive feedback on code, communication and the progress of a workshop. Specifically, we use Github issues to facilitate code reviews.

In just our Web Fundamentals Workshop, as you can see below, since May we have given approximately 400 code reviews.

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An example of the nature of some of the short but sweet code reviews we give look like:

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And also...

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Twice-weekly Collaborative Coding Sessions.

Let's just say that with up to 8 different people interacting with the same terminal, code base and human-machine feedback cycle, live sessions are not anything like a lecture.

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We set the direction of each live session by assessing what students are interested in, confused by and what topics we as facilitators think need to be introduced.

Inside our group sessions we have two key goals. We want to put students first in the 'smile zone' and then in the 'light bulb zone'!

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Group chat via Slack

We have a thriving slack presence where students and teachers interact about all things programming. This channel is active from the early morning till frequently midnight PST. The chat environment allows for rich, on the spot teaching, debugging and community.

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And that's a wrap!

CodeUnion uses github for code reviews, live interactive coding sessions and a rich chat environment to hopefully give students an awesome learning and collaboration experience.

Contact us [email protected] if you'd like to learn more!